1. Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to a method and system for creating superior guides, and more particularly, to a method and system to create incentives for Internet users to contribute to the body of online guides by creating competition and reward for doing so.
2. Related Art
The Internet is full of information in forums, in wikis, on company websites, in blogs, etc. A wiki is a medium which can be edited by anyone with access to it, and provides methods for linking from one page to another. Wikis are typically collaborative websites. Blogs are websites where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. On the Internet, simple information is oftentimes buried in voluminous manuals, while other information is buried in lengthy forum threads. Wrong answers to simple questions abound, and the accuracy of much of the published content on the Internet is questionable.
Search engines rarely discriminate between good answers and poor ones. Search engines are more interested in finding relevance, not accuracy. Searching a simple question on even a narrow topic such as replacement of the power supply fan in a Dell Dimension XPS personal computer may yield a dozen conflicting answers and require hours of research. One problem encountered is how to find and assess the reliability and usefulness of the plethora of information typically found through Internet searching.
For instance, many searches are investigations such as what one needs to know to buy a washer and dryer, or why Pluto is not technically considered a planet. Other investigations may include finding out what is fun to do in Singapore, why a computer has a virus, and how to adopt a baby from another country. The normal way such searches are usually performed is to enter a handful of keywords as part of a search request to an online search engine or similar resource. If one is lucky, a site in the first few results may or may not be authoritative, but may appear to answer the question. Often, however, more searches are required; even then, the answer is often complex and may require understanding some preliminary principles or related facts.
Modern search is limited by the form of the content. It is not by accident that the Wikipedia internet encyclopedia, available on the World Wide Web at wikipedia.org, dominates the top entries for factual or informational searches, because there is a thirst for such information and few other websites with the volume or detail of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. The Wikipedia encyclopedia, however, has no competition between entries, and even if there were, there is no mechanism for users to express their evaluations. Indeed, the Wikipedia database generally contains only one entry on a given subject that is revisable by anyone. Furthermore, the Wikipedia online resource is limited to encyclopedia-type entries, and hence, does not have information about a variety of topics that may interest many consumers of Internet information.